It is with much joy and anticipation that I once again welcome the season of Advent. We begin fresh with the first half of the new church year and the life of Christ as it flows through the anticipation of His coming, His birth, His Epiphany as true God and true man, His suffering, death and resurrection.

Advent blends together the longing for His second coming with the celebration of His nativity all so real and delivered through the gifts of Word and Sacraments. HE is coming! Watch! Wait! Prepare! Yearn! Come, Lord Jesus, Come!

May you be blessed through the worship life of your congregation as you "prepare" to bring all praise to the Christ Child as He became human flesh to set us free from the bondage of our sins. At the same time may our Advent preparation include our intentional readiness for our sanctified response to the fact that He has come to allow us to no longer live for ourselves, but to be able to increasingly live for Him.

It is precisely for the purpose of increasingly living for Him that you were reintroduced to our NED Blueprint for Mission and its revised goals in our last issue of NED NEWS. Advent is a great time to prepare your own mission response to the gift of the Christ Child and to be a catalyst for  your congregation's response to the challenges of our district Blueprint for Mission.

Our recent Pastors' Conference gave us a chance as pastors to inform and challenge one another in how we might personally, and as congregations and circuits, be increasingly intentional in how we can together introduce new mission initiatives. Goals for our circuits and congregations were discussed and written down with the intention of helping each other be about the work of witness, mercy and life together.

A new emphasis Synod-wide and most directly here in the NED is to work as circuits to do together what we have often done only as individual congregations. It is time for us to encourage and enable each other to be one together in reaching out to the needs of body and soul of those all around us.

May your Advent truly be an adventure in your home, congregation, circuit and district as we prepare for His Coming. Come, Lord Jesus, Come in all that we do together to celebrate His incarnation and the fact that His coming in human flesh was for the salvation of all mankind.